Digitized it using "capture now" FCP to create one long file of the raw footage.

Client wanted a certain segment of the clip ASAP, so brought the whole raw footage clip onto timeline, razored out pertinent footage (about 4 minutes), exported just that little piece, without doing any processing, to create a new clip.

New clip, when I bring it into mediainfoMac, a program that will tell you all the specs of a video file, says the file format for the small clip is MPEG 4 instead of quicktime (it says original long raw footage clip is quicktime).

Client is telling me they can't open the small clip on their end (I dropboxed it) 'cause QT is telling them it isn't a .mov file.

Where is this MPEG 4 business coming from? All I did was drop the whole "tape" on the timeline, cut the relevant section out, and export as a new clip. When I originally dropped the "tape" on the timeline, I tell it to conform sequence settings to clip/footage settings, so why is it coming out in a different format?

Re: Encoding issue - small clip from raw footage has different file format?

Maybe your last export was set to those settings. Just check when you are exporting whether you are using the sequence settings (which you should check anyway) and making a stand alone movie or some other settings for some reason.

Re: Encoding issue - small clip from raw footage has different file format?

Makes no sense. . .

I did "export quicktime movie",

"current audio video settings" , which is just the sequence settings, which I allowed FCP to conform to the footage the first time I dropped it into the timeline. I even went to sequence settings to see what it was doing, and they were correct. DV NTSC for Codec.

Anyway, thanks, but it's a moot point by now. Had to overnight them the tape itself (which still got there late). Client uninstalled then reinstalled all his players, and everything magically worked. Ended up editing off the original footage I'd dropboxed!